Audacious

10 years ago

Bush's Cold Welcome

As the former president gears up for the big launch of his "Freedom Institute," AKA presidential library at Southern Methodist University, professors prepare to avoid him like the plague. The library's forebearers have all been, however presidential, bound to the standards of the academic institutions with which they are affiliated. Bush's library, however, will answer only to Bush's foundation. Not to the university. This means that it could be free to advance the agenda that the 43rd president so fruitfully (or frightfully) explored in Iraq, without subjecting itself to the constraints of scholarly rigor or academic inquiry. In other words, just like its creator, the Freedom Institute will never have to admit when it's wrong.